


No Pain, No…Loss?

by NotASpaceAlien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Warning for eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 23:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotASpaceAlien/pseuds/NotASpaceAlien
Summary: Aziraphale has a horrifying realization and decides he needs to lose weight.





	No Pain, No…Loss?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunasong365](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunasong365/gifts).



> Made for the 2017 good omens holiday exchange!  
> On Dreamwidth at https://go-exchange.dreamwidth.org/215088.html  
> On tumblr at http://not-a-space-alien.tumblr.com/post/169523763350/hello-here-i-am-to-post-the-fic-that-i-wrote-for

 

It happened one day when Aziraphale finally admitted that he needed to replace the shirt he had refused to miracle the paint stain out of all those years ago.  He had gone to the department store, and a friendly associate had been helping him pick out something new when she said:

“You know, you carry yourself with a lot of confidence for someone your size.  It’s refreshing.”

Aziraphale furrowed his brow, unsure of what to say.  The young lady, who _had_ meant it as a compliment but who had failed to consider that it might not be received that way, shifted nervously from foot to foot and waited for the angel to start yelling at her.

“What do you mean?” was what Aziraphale finally said.

“Well, you know,” said the employee.  “Sometimes people who aren’t exactly thin don’t have confidence, and…”

“Why would not being thin mean I don’t have confidence?” said Aziraphale.  “I thought…Isn’t being overweight considered attractive?”

As soon as the words left Aziraphale’s mouth, an electric thrill of realization bolted through him as he suddenly saw all the mannequins in the store—all very sticklike specimens—in a new light.

How…How could he have missed it?  Had he really still been stuck in archaic standards of beauty this whole time? When had being overweight shifted from being desirable to being ugly?  How could he not have noticed?

What else wasn’t he aware of?  What if he was constantly embarrassing himself because of something obvious he had failed to notice was actually hideous?

What if tartan _wasn’t_ stylish?

“Well, it’s—it’s like this,” said the hapless saleswoman, breaking his train of thought.  “Is there someone that you fancy?”

“In what way?”

“You know…in the way that you want to impress them?”

Aziraphale’s thoughts went to Crowley and the angel’s rather nebulous feelings about him, which he refused to define, but which seemed to fit the description well enough.  “Yes.”

“Well, don’t you think she’d want a strong, fit specimen?  Instead of someone who looks like they sit on the couch all day?”*

*Aziraphale did, in fact, sit on the couch almost all day reading.

“Or _he!_ ” interjected another sales associate, who was folding shirts nearby and had been eavesdropping.  “Nobody said it has to be a woman.”

“Oh, you can’t make assumption about people like that,” said the first woman.  “It’s rude.”

They both looked at Aziraphale, again afraid he would get angry at them, but he was too deep in thought to notice.  He was so abjectly horrified by the realization that Crowley had probably thought he was incredibly ugly for decades now, and how could he not have noticed?

“Sir?” said the woman, noting the growing unease on his face.

“I have to go,” said Aziraphale, thrusting the entire selection of tops he had picked out back into her arms and hustling out the store.

“Told you it was rude,” she said to her coworker.

* * *

Aziraphale called Crowley up immediately and asked him to have dinner that night.  Aziraphale found himself eating through his pantry in the meantime, and only realised afterwards that he had never noticed his habit of stress-eating before.

Crowley was already at the restaurant when Aziraphale got there, which was surprising because Crowley was usually late.  The demon had a small white rectangle in his hand, which he was playing with as Aziraphale sat down.

“Aziraphale!” he said cheerfully.  “Check it out!  The latest electronic trap from my favourite over-priced computer company.  It’s designed to trick people into buying something incredibly expensive that they don’t need or even particularly want.”

“ _You_ bought one,” said Aziraphale, preoccupied.

Crowley reddened. “Well, of course _I_ bought one.  That doesn’t count because I didn’t use real money.  It costs a grand.  I spent a thousand even.  More than some humans make in a month!  And I didn’t even get _all_ the extra features that increase the price.  My finest work.”  He brandished the device for Aziraphale to see.  “Here, watch this.  It unlocks by scanning your face.  Pretty cool, huh?”  He fiddled with it, but the touted feature failed to materialise.  “Here—wait—just watch…”

He got it to work eventually, and seemed disappointed when Aziraphale did not act impressed.  He tapped things on the screen and tried to explain what everything did.  To any technically-savvy human, it would have been obvious he had no idea what he was talking about.

“And it has _twelve Hertz_ of RAM,” he said proudly. “It’s the next big gotta-have-it that every rich yuppie will clamber to get their consumeristic hands on this holiday season—”

“Crowley,” interrupted Aziraphale irritably, “it’s _exactly_ the same as the last one you showed me.”

Crowley drew his phone to his chest, as though Aziraphale might have hurt its feelings.  “Why, that’s simply not true!”

“Then how is it different?”

“Well, it’s thinner.”

Aziraphale felt himself starting to sweat.  “It’s…thin?”

“Twenty percent thinner! They were quite specific about that. Thinner than what, I’m not sure. But it’s thin all right.”

Aziraphale pulled at his collar as Crowley tapped enthusiastically on the screen.  The demon was relieved that Aziraphale seemed too distracted to notice he didn’t actually know how to use most of his phone’s new features.

“So…you like things that are thin, then?” said Aziraphale.

“That’s the aesthetic nowadays,” said Crowley, absorbed in the screen.  “Amazing how much they can cram in there.  The next iteration will disappear completely when you turn it sideways. Say, do you have a cell phone, Aziraphale?  I can help you pick one out if not.  But I bet you have one of those old ones you refuse to part with, one of those really chunky…”

Aziraphale looked down at himself.

“Beige…”

Aziraphale tugged at his slacks and brown sweater.

“And horrendously ugly things.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale burst out, unable to bear it any longer, “do you think I’m fat?”

And here is what made what came next _really_ tragic:  If Aziraphale had asked _Do you think I’m ugly?_ instead, Crowley would have said _No, of course not, what made you think that?_ and all the tragedies that were about to befall poor Aziraphale would have been averted.  But that’s not what he had asked, and Crowley, who _did_ think Aziraphale was fat, but not necessarily ugly, did not realise saying so would to Aziraphale, in this state of mind, be the equivalent of _Yes, and therefore I think you are ugly._

Aziraphale was very visibly, very obviously fat, and Crowley had always thought he seemed quite proud of it** actually, so Crowley let a faint smile ghost across his face. “Um…Is this a trick question?”

**He had been.

Aziraphale stood, pushing his chair out and clattering the silverware.  “I have to go right now.”

“Uhh…” said Crowley. “All right?  Shall I come by the shop later?”

“No!” said Aziraphale, grabbing his jacket. “No, you’d better not.  Don’t come over until I’m proper.”

“Proper?” said Crowley, bewildered, but Aziraphale had already run away.

* * *

_Exactly as I feared,_ Aziraphale thought.   _He does think I’m ugly.  Fat and ugly and a loser.  And why wouldn’t he?  He’s probably just been spending time with me out of pity._

Aziraphale did not want to examine exactly why he felt it was so important that Crowley think he was attractive.  It’s not like he, Aziraphale, was attracted to Crowley.  Was he?

No, of course not. Angels didn’t really think that way. So it had to be something else. Something entirely innocent and perfectly reasonable to explain why he wanted taking his shirt off to prompt Crowley to whistle and go “Nice body, angel,” or somesuch nonsense.

Not that he had been fantasising about it.

He did unfortunately think that this desire might be considered vanity, which was unambiguously a sin.  He was able to brush the issue aside very quickly with some clumsy excuse besides wanting to impress his demonic counterpart.  Being thin was healthier, wasn’t it?  Why else would it be a beauty standard?  That’s it, his being thin would be for health reasons, of course. He had to be a good role model for humans.  Therefore his losing weight would be promoting heavenly values.  Or something.

The excuse was good enough and he shelved that train of thought, turning himself towards the matter at hand: He had to become thin, and he had to do it as fast as possible.

The thought occurred to him to simply use a miracle to change his corporation, of course. Crowley did it all the time.  He suspected that was how Crowley stayed as thin as he did.  Aziraphale had always assumed Crowley wanted to look that way because he was a snake and it felt right, but now he knew it was because Crowley wanted to be hip and fashionable.   _Thin._

But that’s not how Aziraphale did things.  He was going to do it the right way.  The human way.

And he had a treasure trove of human knowledge in his bookshop.  This was going to be a snap.  He’d just look through his books for something about how to lose weight, and he’d do it, and then Crowley would love him.

What?  Where had that last thought come from?  He pushed it from his mind as quickly as it appeared, then got to work.

Aziraphale began to scour his collection, piling everything that looked even remotely useful into his arms. Then, he took it all into the back room and thumped it onto the table to do what he did best:  Read.

The first thing he found was a pamphlet that came with a little container of something which rattled around.  He had dug it out of a trunk buried under a stack of newspapers.  He saw that the tag affixed to the bottle promised him he could keep eating as much as he wanted and still lose weight by swallowing the pill within, a single-use miracle cure.  Aziraphale fetched a glass of water and swallowed it.  It wasn’t until much later when he read the fine print did he realise it had been a capsule containing tapeworm eggs.

That was the only thing in the pile that required something other than reading.  Most of his materials jogged his memory about something he had heard once years before.

“Oh, yes.  I remember this,” he said, taking out a pamphlet he had bought for one dollar decades ago.

He put the one that looked easiest at the very top of the pile, then sorted the rest of them by the order in which he wanted to try them.

This was going to be easy.

* * *

Contrary to instructions, Crowley came over to the shop the next morning.  He had just downloaded a very amusing app onto his phone, and he wanted to show Aziraphale.

He found the angel behind the counter of his bookshop.  His hand was in a jar which was filled with something that looked suspiciously like cotton balls.  Crowley peered through the front window and watched him pop one of the white spheres into his mouth and swallow without chewing.  Crowley also noted he had on a pair of cheap-looking glasses with blue lenses.

Crowley used a miracle to keep the bell on the door silent so he could sneak up without Aziraphale seeing. He slithered through the books and crawled in front of the counter, then peeked up.  Aziraphale did not notice him, consuming another one of the white spheres, which Crowley was at this point convinced was some kind of novelty candy very cleverly made up to look like cotton balls, so you could eat one and then say to your horrified friends _Ha! It’s just candy floss, don’t worry._

Crowley reached one hand up and snuck a globule from the jar, then put it in his mouth.  It was genuinely just a cotton ball.

“Angel, what the Heaven?” said Crowley, shooting up and scaring Aziraphale.  “Are you eating _cotton balls?_ ”

Aziraphale looked at him with two bloodshot eyes, one of which was lazily drifting off center, visible even through the blue lenses.  “Yes, of course,” he mumbled.

“Are…are you _drunk?_ ” said Crowley.  “It’s not even noon yet!”

“”ve got to lose weight,” said Aziraphale.

Lose weight?  A shadow of a doubt crossed Crowley’s mind briefly, wondering if maybe it had been because of the exchange they had had at dinner.  But he put it out of his mind; he knew Aziraphale didn’t hold Crowley’s good opinion in such high regard, even if Crowley _did_ think Aziraphale needed to lose weight, which he didn’t. Besides, it had only been a quick exchange; he was probably reading into it too much.

“Just use a miracle to change your shape if you want to be thin so bad,” said Crowley, who couldn’t comprehend why Aziraphale would suddenly want to take such a hard turn in his body image.

Aziraphale shook his head sadly.  “I’ll always know.  Deep down.”

“…What, like as in you’ve got buildup in your arteries?”

“I just want to be more _svelte_ ,” Aziraphale snapped.

“But why?” said Crowley.

Aziraphale drunkenly leaned forwards, pointing at the demon menacingly.  His blue-lensed glasses slid down his nose.  “ _That_.  Is not any of your businessssssssss, you reptile!”

“All right, all right,” said Crowley, putting his hands up.  “But what made you think getting drunk is the way to lose weight?”

Aziraphale pushed his glasses back up, then reached behind the counter and slapped a pamphlet in front of Crowley.  “This doctor man says so,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley leaned forwards to see the pamphlet said:

THE DRINKING MAN’S DIET  
ROBERT CAMERON  
THE ORIGINAL LOW-CARB DIET  
HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT WITH A MINIMUM OF WILLPOWER

_Also Recommended for Teetotalers_

Crowley looked up at Aziraphale and quirked an eyebrow.

“I paid an entire dollar for this book, and I intend to use it,” Aziraphale slurred.  “For your information, gin, vodka, rum, brandy, whisky, and distilled spirits contain _at most_ trace amounts of car—carbohindr…car… car-bo-hy-drates.”

“So?” said Crowley.

Aziraphale paused with another cotton ball halfway to his mouth.  “ _So?_ ” he shrieked.  “That makes you lose weight!”

“And the glasses?” said Crowley, tapping the rims resting on Aziraphale’s nose.  “They what?  Make everything look a bit sadder?”

“For your _information_ ,” said Aziraphale, tossing another book onto the counter, “the color blue suppresses appetite.  It’s _called_ the vision diet.”

“And the cotton balls?!”

“They fill your stomach!”

Crowley eyed the cottons balls on the counter, which were resting next to a jar of pills, which thankfully looked a bit more modern than the rest of Aziraphale’s materials.  “…Just don’t throw up.  You might take your nail polish off.  What are these?”  The pill bottle rattled as he picked it up.

“Oh!” said Aziraphale. “A very reliable salesman at the store assured me the weight would just fall off if I took one of those pills a day.”

Crowley paled a little as he recognised the bottle.  It was one of those supposed miracle weight loss cures that amounted to little more than sugar pills peddled extremely convincingly to gullible and desperate people, and Crowley had been partly responsible for this specific brand’s propagation.  It had seemed like a good low-grade evil at the time.

He struggled to think of a way to tell Aziraphale the pills wouldn’t work without telling him how he knew that, since that would surely merit him a stern—and drunken—talking-to from Aziraphale, who was clearly very irritated.  

He set the bottle down. “Look, angel, I’m saying this as a friend.  If you want to lose weight, all this junk and supposed cheat codes aren’t the way to do it. This isn’t healthy.  You have to exercise, and you have to eat fewer calories, fewer fats and more vegetables.  That’s the way to do it.”

Aziraphale looked at him blearily.  “Mmmm…how would you know about all that?  I’m positive you’ve never worked to lose weight in your entire life.”

“There’s an entire industry built around peddling this nonsense,” said Crowley, carefully avoiding who had contributed to it.  Famine tended to do most of the big legwork in this area, but Crowley _may_ have encouraged the charlatans and snake oil salesmen…s…something oil…that came out of the woodworks to profit off of it, just a little bit.  “They profit off the fact that people are desperate to take a shortcut.  None of it’s really real.  They make money off making you feel bad about yourself. Their power would disappear the instant any of these humans looked in the mirror and decided they liked what they saw.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale snipped. “If it’s so easy, _you_ do it.”

“I never said it was easy,” said Crowley.  “I’m telling you, just type it into Google if you don’t believe me.”

“Get out of my shop!” said Aziraphale.  “I think I know what I’m doing!  I don’t need you pestering me with un-asked for advice.”

Crowley sighed.  “All right.”

Aziraphale angrily watched his back as he exited the shop.  Aziraphale reached into the jar and took another cotton ball.  Then, he sighed, put it down, and went upstairs and booted up his personal computer.

  
  
  


* * *

“All right,” said Timothy, which happened to be the name of the dietician and fitness trainer Aziraphale had gone to consult.  “What’s your goal weight?”

Aziraphale scooted forwards in his chair to try and see what Tim was typing on his screen, but Tim tilted it away from him.  “Ah, my goal?” said Aziraphale.  “I’d like to be thin and beautiful.”

Tim chuckled.  “We have to set more specific goals if you want success, Mr Fell. Trust me, this always works better if you have a number in mind.”

“All right,” said Aziraphale.  “I’d like to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.”

Tim’s eyes swept up and down Aziraphale, and his lip curled.  “Mmmm….I’ll…I’ll mark your first stepping stone at two hundred.  Now let’s set a time frame.  What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to lose forty pounds?”

“Oh, well I’d like it to be as soon as possible,” said Aziraphale.  “Do you think we could do it in a week?  How many cotton balls would I have to eat to make that happen?”

* * *

Aziraphale walked out of the dietician’s office with a meal plan, an exercise routine, and a sinking feeling that he would have to start lopping limbs off to make the numbers on the scale go down.

Tim had asked how many calories Aziraphale usually ate in a day, and Aziraphale had asked what the devil a calorie was, and assured Tim he was sure he had never eaten such a thing in his whole life.  That had given Tim a better idea of what kind of work he had cut out for him, and had been able to adjust his calculations accordingly.

The plan on the paper, Tim assured him, would get him to 200 pounds by March, if he followed it to the letter.

Aziraphale worked on the exercise part first, because that seemed easiest.  Tim had agreed that jogging would be an acceptable start, so Aziraphale dug out a pair of track shorts that had been long buried at the bottom of his wardrobe, snapping the elastic against his skin and then moving on to try and find a sweatband.  He put on his running shoes, then stepped outside.

Perfect.  The weather was good and there weren’t many people in the street.  All he’d have to do was jog down the sidewalk, and then he’d lose weight, and then Crowley would love him.

Aziraphale started; the feeling of his weight bouncing was not entirely comfortable, and he soon made the discovery that he couldn’t do this activity while wearing his glasses because the heavy lenses wouldn’t stay situated on his face.  He made a U-turn and put his glasses back in the shop.  He didn’t really _need_ them anyway; they were mostly for aesthetics.

He started a second time, only to realise he should probably get some music to listen to.  He veered back into the shop and found his Zune, sitting disused in his desk drawer, and put his headphones in.

He set out a third time and got halfway down the block before thinking he should probably bring a water bottle in case he got dehydrated.  While he was there, he got some reflective stickers so that motorists could see him in case in got dark.

“All right,” said Aziraphale, while his Zune played “Eye of the Tiger” at the appropriate moment. “Let’s do this.”

He jogged.  After a while, his legs started to hurt, but he reminded himself no pain meant no gain.  His knees also felt the brunt of the impact of his feet on the sidewalk, but it’s not like he had to worry about arthritis.

He stopped when his legs felt like they were Jell-O and couldn’t support his weight anymore. Gasping, wiping his brow with his sweatband, and feeling like his workout should be quite close to over by now, he looked up to see how far he had gone.  He could still see the bookshop at the end of the block.

Aziraphale very quickly convinced himself he didn’t have time to exercise, what with how busy he was with angelic work and all that, and Crowley had seemed to be hitting the mischief quite a bit harder than usual lately, and maybe after things had calmed down a little he could really put his mind to this exercise thing, but not now, because he was too distracted.

But the diet portion of Tim’s plan he could do, surely.  Not exercising would slow it down a little, but he would still get there.  After showering, Aziraphale took the meal plan out and looked at it.

He frowned.  “That doesn’t seem right.”

He mounted the stairs and fired up his computer again so he could access the internet and type in “how many calories should I eat in a day to lose weight?”

  
  
  


 

 

* * *

Crowley had thought that maybe he had done something to upset Aziraphale, so he was surprised when Aziraphale accepted his offer to go out to eat again.  Hopefully he would eat something more substantial than cotton balls.

Aziraphale was standing outside the restaurant smoking when Crowley got there.  This took him doubly by surprise, because Crowley sometimes smoked, but Aziraphale usually didn’t.

“Nicotine is an appetite suppressant,” was what Aziraphale said to answer the demon’s questioning gaze.

“…All right,” said Crowley, sensing that Aziraphale was very crabby and wanting to avoid a row.  “I’ll get us a table.  You can come inside when you’re done.”

Aziraphale came in as soon as Crowley sat down, and when he seated himself across from the demon, he immediately produced a bottle of apple cider vinegar and started to drink it.

Crowley stared at him.

Aziraphale put the bottle down and made eye contact with Crowley challengingly.

“Are you drinking apple cider vinegar?” Crowley asked, despite the fact that Aziraphale had just very clearly and unambiguously drunk apple cider vinegar.

“Yes.”

“…Why?”

“Because it tastes less horrible than plain vinegar.”

“But why are you drinking vinegar at all?”

“It’s called the vinegar diet.”

“And the vinegar diet consists of…?”

“Drinking vinegar.”

“Ah.”

Aziraphale just sat stewing without looking at the menu.  When the waiter came over, Crowley had a wonderful idea to try and cheer him up.

“I’ll have a slice of devil’s food cake, please.”  He glanced at Aziraphale, who didn’t seem to have noticed.  “And an order of deviled eggs, please,” Crowley tacked on quickly, to no response.

Crowley frowned. Usually when he ordered anything like that, Aziraphale found it uproariously funny but tried to hide his giggles behind polite coughs.  But he hadn’t responded at all.

Normally neither of these things was on the menu, but the server inexplicably found himself inclined to go check for them in the kitchen, where they would miraculously be waiting for him, at a thought from Crowley.  The server moved off to get his order for him, leaving the two of them alone.

The silence was awkward and unbearable.  The server brought Crowley’s order out, then asked Aziraphale if he wanted anything. Aziraphale asked if he could have the nutritional information for the items on the menu.  The server produced a special menu with dietary information on it, which Aziraphale scanned for a moment before distastefully ordering a salad and handing it back.

“So,” said Crowley, playing with his fork, “how’s the losing weight thing going, anyway?”

Aziraphale tensed up. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth.

Crowley desperately wanted to ask _why_ Aziraphale wanted to lose weight, but knew that with Aziraphale in such a foul mood, it would only earn him an irritated and snapped reply of no real substance.  The way he evaded the topic earlier indicated very clearly that it was for some reason Aziraphale didn’t want to say, which made Crowley think that maybe Heaven had had something to do with it.  He didn’t know what else could motivate the angel so thoroughly— and so bitterly.

Crowley dared not say anything until the server came out with Aziraphale’s salad—which he set about eating in a strangely methodic way.

“Um,” said Crowley. “Angel, are you….counting?”

“I have to chew salad exactly forty-two times,” said Aziraphale, without looking up from his salad as though it were a very difficult math problem.

“…Why?”

“‘Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate.’  Mr Fletcher.”

Crowley was too scared to ask what the hell that meant.  This version of Aziraphale was a nightmare.  He took another bite of cake.

“Look at you,” Aziraphale snarled.  “You and your _cake._ ”

Crowley’s fork froze halfway to his mouth.  “Er…yes?”

Aziraphale looked like he wanted to flip the table.  “You’re a hypocrite, you know that?  You’re shallow and petty, and I don’t know why I expected anything more from someone like _you._ ”

His voice rose steadily in volume until he was practically shouting, and those at the tables around them had gone silent and twisted to look at him.

Slowly, Crowley slipped his sunglasses out of his breast pocket and put them on, hoping they would keep Aziraphale from reading the expression on his face.  “I don’t know what you’re on about, Aziraphale.  But go fuck yourself.”

Aziraphale collected his coat and vacated the table without a further word, red with anger.

* * *

Aziraphale knew that he had just snapped at Crowley because he hadn’t had anything real to eat for days at that point.  And watching him eat as though he hadn’t a care in the world, and have that perfect figure, was just too much for him, when he was feeling weighted down so much recently—both literally and metaphorically.

He thought he hated Crowley for making him do this, which should have in theory made Aziraphale want to give up since impressing him wouldn’t be important any more.  But it wasn’t _really_ that he hated Crowley.  It was the terrible, disgusting feeling of not being good enough in your own skin, of looking in the mirror and seeing someone that no one could ever love, not even yourself. And that made him decide to step it up and get this over with.  Anything to just feel okay with himself.

That’s how he ended up lying on the floor of the shop’s back room, stoned out of his mind.  He had bought a concoction of every drug he thought might be helpful and taken them all at once.

Currently, he was not enjoying it.  His hands had gone numb, and a faint roar of fuzzy static vibrated in the back of skull. His stomach felt like it was in knots. And he was having auditory hallucinations.

“Aziraphale,” said a faint voice, muffled, as though being transmitted through water.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me.  I’m down here.”

“Who?”

“I’m in your stomach. You swallowed me earlier.”

Aziraphale looked down at his feet, which seemed to be miles away.  “Oh, worm?”

“That’s right,” gurgled the voice.  “And you might as well give up on this whole endeavor.  Just start stuffing yourself again and feed me.  You’ll always be an ugly blob.  There’s no use fighting it.”

“Listen here, you!” said Aziraphale indignantly.  “You’re one to talk!  You’re a tapeworm living in someone else’s stomach!”

“Aziraphale?” said a voice that sounded suspiciously like Crowley’s.  He felt something ghost against his arm, and waved his hands wildly to try and dispatch it.

“Get off me!  Go away!  I’m going to do this!”

“Aziraphale?” repeated the voice, and this time Aziraphale felt his perception of reality snap back into place so fast he almost got whiplash.  He was sprawled out on the floor, and Crowley was kneeling beside him, hovering over him.

“Oh, thank somebody,” said Crowley.  “I thought you might be dying.”

Aziraphale sat up. “What happened?  What?  When did you get here?”

“I just came over and you were lying down and yelling about how I was living in someone else’s stomach. Then I noticed you had overdosed on enough drugs to tranquilize a horse and performed a miracle so you wouldn’t get discorporated, you bloody idiot.”

Aziraphale looked over at the pill bottles that still lay spilled everywhere.  “’s how Elvis lost weight,” he offered sheepishly.

“You know how Elvis died, right?”

“…’s not dead, you know.”

“All right,” said Crowley. “This has gone from kind of funny to genuinely worrying, Aziraphale.  What’s really going on?”

Aziraphale didn’t make eye contact, looking downcast.  “’ve just got to lose weight, that’s all.”

Crowley stared at him for a second, gears in his head turning.  “All right.  I think I see what’s going on here.”

“You do?” said Aziraphale, suddenly worried that Crowley would figure it out and then they’d have to have a conversation about their _feelings._

Crowley stood. “Yes.  I know _exactly_ what’s happening here. And I’m going to fix it.  You wait here.”

And he ran out the front door on a mission, leaving Aziraphale leaning blearily on the couch.

* * *

The Newtrition Corp.’s executive headquarters were stationed in New York, in a very tall building that made sure whoever was at the top could look down on the entire city.  This is what Raven Sable was currently doing, looking out the impressive wall made of glass panes that afforded the breathtaking view.  Behind him, his marketing strategiser was pecking away on a tablet with a very small keyboard.

“Penny, write this down,” said Sable.

Penny swiped her screen and opened a new document.

Sable tented his fingers. “America has been the biggest challenge yet.  There’s just so much _food_ everywhere.  Wait, don’t write _this_ down.  It’s just my philosophical preamble. Penny?  Penny, I can hear you writing it down.”

“Sorry.”

Sable turned around and spread his arms wide.  “There’s _food everywhere._  Countries with scarce resources are hardly a challenge anymore. That’s why I was drawn to America. Have you _seen_ how much _corn_ there is in the Midwest?  How could anyone possibly starve in this country?  I’ve managed to convince them to throw a lot of it away, but it doesn’t even make a dent.”

Penny pecked away on her undersized keyboard, nodding.  She never understood a single thing her boss said, but she had learned he was the kind of eclectic genius that you just needed to wait around until he was done spouting nonsense and got to a good idea, and then the money would start pouring in.

“That’s where we came in several years ago,” said Sable.  “And CHOW has been a massive success.  There’s a kind of modern beauty in someone being simultaneously overweight and undernourished.  But we need to go deeper.”

“Deeper, sir?”

“We need to start them earlier.  Too many parents are still making their kids eat their vegetables.”  He tented his hands. “What _if—_ and hear me out—what _if_ we made a product exclusively for children?”

Penny popped her gum. “We’d have to compete with Lunchables and Kid Cuisine.”

“We can undercut them by making our product _slightly_ less expensive,” said Sable.  “Something that will fit in a lunchbox, and has _just_ the right amount of sugar.  Or, wait, even better.” He pointed at Penny.  “Tell me, Penny. What’s the best part of a Happy Meal?”

Penny looked at him boredly, knowing he was just going to tell her anyway regardless of her answer.

“The fact that it comes with a toy,” Sable answered himself.  “But _what if_ we made a version of a Happy Meal that came with _no toy._ ”

“So…just a meal?”

“Yes, you’ve got it!”

Penny, who couldn’t help but feel her boss’s natural talent had been steadily slipping since a certain visit to Tadfield a few decades ago, looked at Sable doubtfully.  “We already sell a product called Meals.”

Sable paused, seeming to think very hard.  “Ah…Of course we do.  I know that. It wouldn’t just be called _Meals._  It could be…Meals for kids!”

“A kid’s meal?”

“Yes!”

“That’s what Burger King already calls theirs.”

Whatever potential embarrassment would have come upon Sable in his reply was spared him, for at that moment there was a commotion in the hall, and a man in a suit and dark glasses shoved his way past the security guards and tumbled into the office.

“Sir, you can’t go in there!”

“Piss off, the lot of you!” the intruder shouted.

“Well, well!” said Sable. “Donnie, let the man in, it’s obvious he’s got something very important to say.”

The security guard retreated slightly, still looking at the newcomer suspiciously.

Sable sat down at his desk. His eyes swept up and down Crowley, seeming to see there was something off about him even through the dark glasses. “Penny, Donnie, give us a minute alone, will you?”

The room was cleared of humans in a few seconds.  Crowley straightened his tie and took a seat across from Sable’s desk.  “Thank you.”

Sable produced a bottle of liquor from somewhere and offered the demon some.  Crowley politely declined, feeling it would be unwise to have anything to eat or drink offered to him by Famine, of all people.

“More for me,” said Sable, shrugging.  He poured himself a glass, then took a luxurious sip before speaking.  “So, care to introduce yourself, Mr ...?”

“You know damn well who I am,” Crowley growled.

“Ah…” said Sable.  “Of course…old sport.”

“You’ve done something to my friend,” said Crowley.  “And I demand you knock it off immediately.”

“Your friend is…?”

“Aziraphale, the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, of course.”

Sable smiled.  “Ah, the Garden was a bit before my time, unfortunately.”

“Wait…I’m older than you?” said Crowley, who had somehow gotten into the habit of assuming anyone who was more powerful than him had to have been birthed in the stormy origins of the universe long before he was even thought of.

“’Fraid so…old sport.”

“Never mind that,” said Crowley viciously.  “You’ve done something to him.  I know it was you.  I demand you fix him.  Back to the way he was before.”

Sable stared at Crowley very, very hard, seeming to look right through his sunglasses and stare into his core.

Sable snapped his fingers. “ _Crowley._ ”

“Yes?”

“I remember you from that thing you did with the diet pills.  Excellent craftsmanship.”

“Oh, you noticed that?” said Crowley, brightening.  “All in a day’s work, really.  If—No! No, I’m angry with you.  My friend Aziraphale. Fix him.”

Sable tossed back the rest of his drink and poured himself more.  “Mmm…can’t say I’ve done any work on angels recently.  Not that I recall.  Not really in my job description.”

“Oh don’t bullshite me,” said Crowley.  “All infernal agents are encouraged to attack celestial ones.”

Sable swirled his alcohol. “Crowley…I’m not _from_ Hell.”

“Of course you are. Where else would you be from? Heaven?”

Sable eyed him sardonically. “Crowley…I sprung from humanity. I’m not from Heaven _or_ Hell.  I’m a kind of tulpa.”

“Wh…” said Crowley.

“Meaning I work on _humans._ Tell me, this friend of yours, I assume he’s become obsessed with losing weight, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Mm, I can see why you were confused.  But between you and me, just as friends.”  He motioned Crowley to lean in closer.  “There’s a limit to what I can do, but if you want someone to really, truly, self-destructively motive _themselves_ , fear of personal rejection does any number of things on a psyche.”  He leaned back, looking self-satisfied.

“Fear of personal rejection?” said Crowley, tasting the concept on his tongue.

Sable nodded.  “Yes.  Now, Mr Crowley, since we’ve discussed _your_ problem, I think we should discuss mine next.”  He stood and pulled a screen down from the ceiling; on it was displayed a line graph, which squiggled up and down indecipherably.  “That thing you did with the diet pills encouraged salesmen to peddle them at considerably higher prices than usual, which increased _their_ revenue, but as you can see it made _our_ profits dip by 3%...”

* * *

Crowley high-tailed it out of America as fast he could, coming back over to England with newfound perspective.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, was still in his shop exactly where Crowley had left him.  He was crying.***  He could not imagine where Crowley had gone or what he could possibly have to say when he came back.

***Aziraphale did not cry very often.  He had cried at the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the crucifixion of Christ, and he had secretly cried while reading _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch_ and trying to decipher how exactly to keep the world from ending.

He curled up on the sofa and waited miserably.

Finally, he heard the front door open and close softly, and footsteps clicked towards him.  Aziraphale looked up to see Crowley put a white box on the table they always had drinks on.

“What’s that?” said Aziraphale.

Crowley unfolded the box to reveal an impeccably iced cake with shavings of white chocolate on top. “Eat this,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale bumbled upright, glowering.  “You have some nerve.”

“Angel,” said Crowley. He sat on the couch and took the angel’s hand, which sent a thrill of some unnamed emotion coursing through Aziraphale.  His hands were surprisingly warm.  “Do you want to lose weight?  Do _you_ really want to?”

Slowly, he shook his head.

“Then why are you doing this to yourself?”

“B-because,” he sobbed, finally out with it.  “Because I don’t want you to think I’m ugly.”

Crowley’s hands squeezed his.  “I don’t think you’re ugly.”

Aziraphale sniffled. “You don’t?”

“Of course not,” said Crowley.

“But you said being thin was the ‘aesthetic.’”

“Angel,” said Crowley, smiling sadly.  “You’re not a fancy electronic device.  You’re my friend.”

“Oh.”

“Did you really think I want you to be thin like a phone or sleek like a car or what-have-you?  Come on, Aziraphale, you’ve been a plump bookshop owner wearing questionable clothes for centuries now.  I wouldn’t want you to change a single thing about yourself. That’s what I lo…”

Aziraphale looked up sharply as the word _almost_ left Crowley’s lips.  Crowley’s eyes widened, and he wished he had been wearing his glasses.  He plunged on before they could linger on it.  “And besides, I know this isn’t what you really look like, remember?”

“What I ‘really’ look like?”

“Y’know.  I’ve seen the version with four heads and the billion eyes and whatnot.”

“Oh.”  Aziraphale had spent so long in a human body he had almost forgotten about that, if he were honest with himself.

“And for the record, that one’s not too hard on the eyes either.”  The embarrassing truth was he found Aziraphale’s inhuman form curiously attractive, and had been wondering if having four faces meant Aziraphale had four of any other parts of his anatomy.  Not that he’d been fantasising.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, reddening.  “Crowley, I suppose I should…apologise for yelling at you.”

Crowley looked a bit rumpled.  “Hmm…Yes, you should.”

“You’re not shallow or petty or any of those things I said about you.  You’re wonderful.”

Crowley tried not to blush. “W-well,” he stammered.  “You were cranky because you hadn’t eaten.”

“Still.”

Crowley sighed.  “Look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight.  But you have to do it for yourself, because _you_ want it.  Not for someone else, and not because you think you ‘should.’”

“But you really don’t think it looks bad?” said Aziraphale.  “All the humans seem convinced it’s improper.”

Crowley’s serpentine tongue flicked out briefly, and he edged closer to Aziraphale.  “Well, I mean, personally I think it’s better for hugging if the other person has a little padding.  And there _are_ some groups that think your body type is attractive.  You could think of yourself as a bear.”

Aziraphale eyed him sharply. “Crowley, you don’t have to make fun of me.”

“No, no,” said Crowley. “It’s what they call people who look like you.  It’s a compliment.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “A bear?  Then what would they call you?”

Crowley didn’t answer. They had called him a twunk, but he thought that was too embarrassing to share.  “S’not important.  But you’re not ugly, all right?  And even if you were ugly, who cares?  I can think of worse things to be than ugly.”

“All right,” said Aziraphale.  “You’re right.”

“Now, stop punishing yourself over it.”

“Do you _want_ a hug?”

“What?”

“You said earlier it was ‘better for hugging.’  Do you _want_ to hug?”

Crowley fiddled with the embroidery on the couch.  “...Yes.”

Aziraphale’s arms came around him and squeezed.  Just as predicted, it contained exactly the right amount of squish, and it was even better than Crowley had imagined.

“Great,” said Aziraphale, disengaging.

“Great,” said Crowley. He got up and went back to the table, picking up the serving knife the cake had come with.  “Now come on.  This cake isn’t going to eat itself.”

“Oooh,” said Aziraphale delectably.  “What kind is it?”

“What else?” said Crowley. “Angel food.”

Aziraphale smiled and tried to hide his laughter in his shirt sleeve.


End file.
